Tower of Etruria

Synopsis

A brave knight named Albion has been sent to recover a princess named Cecelia from a monster-infested tower held by the witch Etruria. Winning her safety (and her company in bed) from a nefarious (but inexperienced) beholder, they must learn to cooperate to face other threats, such as the ninja spy Palmyra and the seductive and deadly Sirena.

Review

By "cooperation", of course, we mean sex. Lots and lots of sex.

Tower of Etruria is essentially a fantasy role-playing game turned into fairly amusing hardcore pornography. Albion (possibly a palette-swap of the main character from Arc the Lad or any number of similar games) is a knight in the mold of, well, Dragon Knight - noble at heart, but if placed before temptation, hesitates only briefly before jumping headlong into it.

Of course, the Princess herself is not exactly a typical "damsel-in-distress" -- since she has magical power, she dishes out quad-nine damage to redshirt zombies and the like. Cecelia is also a borderline lolita character, with her slim curves and young-sounding voice, though honestly if you're this deep in the material, this may not seem like much of a problem (she's at least hit puberty already).

You can pretty much imagine, then, that any female "threats" end up being solved less by swordplay and more by foreplay. Tower of Etruria never feels truly dark: the only truly "evil" character in this piece meets a hilariously ignominious fate, and we also see that Albion's sex appeal comes with some rather humorously troublesome side effects. This short series is played mostly for laughs, and that works fine.

I should mention that the inclusion of this world's version of beholders (a standard D&D creature) as "tentacle monsters" may be logical for the genre, but the implementation is non-standard, including what might just be the first completely consensual tentacle scene in the history of hentai. Wow!

Excusing the fact that Albion is a typical anime male (tears at high pressure, blood at high pressure, other things at high pressure), the sex scenes are passable, and the animation is not top-notch, but actually about on par for a fantasy OAV. The SD scenes and expressions (rare for a hentai title) are pretty amusing as well.

So if you don't mind that this is obviously fantasy in more ways than one, Tower of Etruria is fun and relatively inoffensive.

Too short and shallow to be considered excellent, it nevertheless has plenty of entertaining moments. — Carlos Ross